The problem with independent eyebrows

          In the course of our conversations today, T helped me to identify an area of personal growth.  It is something that many people would defend as a good thing, it is culturally valued.  It is the need to be independent.  The ability to function without a lot of outside support is certainly valuable at times; I don’t think it is healthy to be co-dependent or in a state of denial about personal responsibility. But our obsession with being independent can be crippling in the Christian life because independence isn’t a Jesus value.  He didn’t say that we should come to God by ourselves– instead we are to come through him.  He is our way, our only way.  In the community that he establishes among the disciples there is a strong thread of dependence on the Divine.  He sends them away on missions from time to time, but their source is Christ (and they still had at least one other partner).  And when he finally ascends to heaven, he only leaves them alone for a couple days before sending their Helper.  Jesus gives them a helper because he knows that they cannot be independent. 
          Beyond the dependency that Jesus establishes between his followers and the Divine, he also establishes a healthy interdependency among the members of the community.  In some mystical way we are forgiven when others forgive us and they are forgiven when we choose to mediate the forgiveness of God to them (John 20:23).   Talk about interdependency!  Perhaps if we internalized this mystical truth, the division that is so tenacious in the Church would not be able to exist.  And that is just one element of the dependency.  We are also dependent on the gifts that God has given to each member of the Body.  It wouldn’t be a body if there were two billion eyes. That would be a disturbing monster.  Instead, he gave us all abilities that only function well when in cooperation with the rest of the Body.  The muscle cells are only important because they are attached by tendons to the bones.  Taken in isolation (or independently), each part of the body is interesting but bizarre and irrelevant without the tapestry of the whole.  Have you ever just stared at an eyebrow?  It looks normal on a face, but if you look at it in exclusion from the rest of the face it is a hairy, frightening thing! 
          I know all this in theory.  I love the theology of interdependence; I talk about it all the time.  However, I am an absolute beginner in the practice of interdependence.  I snub the help of others in an effort to proclaim my own greatness as an independent eye brow.  It is completely arrogant to think that I can be in community with God and others without accepting their help in humility.  So I guess this is a public confession of that arrogance and pride.  I am a man who is desperately broken, so broken that I don’t even understand my own limits, the limits of interdependence that God has placed around me to mature me.  Please forgive me that I may be forgiven and pray that I will pursue the interdependence that Christ modeled so well.  Pray that I will, in humility and with thanksgiving, accept the help of others. 

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